Office Links and File Server Migration

Links in Excel, Word and PowerPoint

During a file server migration usually Microsoft Office files
are migrated as well. But Word, Excel or PowerPoint files may have
links to other files or web pages. These links should be considered
before the migration.

The links can be stored in one of the
following ways in a Microsoft Office file :

UNC path (\\server\share\folder\file)

Server relative path (/share/folder/file)

Folder relative path (..\..\folder\file)

Drive path (P:\folder\file)

Avoid broken links

If you don't change the folder structure or the folder names
there is a high chance that most of your links won't be broken
after the migration or update themselves automatically (when you
open a certain file).

With our free software FirstWare-LinkInspector, you
can get an overview of how the links are actually stored in your
Office files. You can save the result of the analysis as a tsv file
(tab sperated CSV). Open the report file with MS Excel to continue
your analysis and decide how you want to proceed with the
links.

Scan the following link types :

Excel links

Word links

PowerPoint links

OLE links

hyperlinks

Web links

picture links

Excel cell references

File associations ( . LNK files )

Microsoft Word and PowerPoint - Contacting template files

If you open a doc(x) or ppt(X) file, Microsoft Word and
PowerPoint try to find the template on which the document was
originally created. Due to a file server migration the template
could be moved as well. If the template can't be found at the
original location, it may take several minutes for the document to
be opened.

a filled column 'template path' tells you, that Word or
Powerpoint will look for the template at startup. Save the report
file and analyze it via Excel. Sort the column 'template path' and
use filters to get a better idea of the links in your files.